Did you shop around for a mortgage?

Consumers will research on average 3 different models of computers before purchasing one. Why does the real estate correspondent care about computers? I don’t. I’m just throwing out some important background information to make my point, like that 96 percent of American consumers compare prices when shopping for anything.

Here’s my point: 40 percent of us get just one quote when shopping for a home loan.

“I think it reflects that consumers are still very confused,” notes Doug Lebda, CEO of LendingTree, which did the survey. Yes, I know, LendingTree is an online service that helps you shop for loans, but they did it through Harris Interactive, which surveyed over 1,300 homeowners.

“When you’re shopping for a mortgage, there are lots of rates and terms and points and programs being thrown at you,” explains Lebda. “You might be almost upside down on your mortgage, you’ve just gone through two years of great confusion in your financial lives, and so you feel maybe just happy to be getting a deal and to be saving a little money and to be actually qualifying.”

Now here’s the really ridiculous part: Only 28 percent of the people surveyed said they were confident they got the best deal.

108 Responses to Did you shop around for a mortgage?

The nearly two-month freeze in foreclosure filings and court cases is about to come to an end as one major bank, HSBC, has restarted filing lawsuits against delinquent mortgage holders in the state, The Post has learned.

The firm, which owns about 10 percent of New York’s mortgages, is the first sizable bank to restart litigating foreclosure cases in the state since Oct. 20, when lawyers were forced to guarantee proper paperwork in such cases.

An HSBC spokesman said, “We believe our foreclosure procedures are sound and we continue to work with our regulators to ensure our processes are appropriate.”

For the past seven weeks, foreclosure actions, those already filed and those in the pipeline, ground to a virtual halt over the so-called “robo-signing” scandal in which major lenders were found to be generating massive amounts of documents they were swearing were true and correct — without ever laying an eye on them.

Three Morris County municipalities have claimed titles as the wealthiest communities in New Jersey, according to the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.

The bureau on Tuesday released the first local demographic details in nearly a decade that also answer such questions as which community is the best educated (Mountain Lakes) and which has the most international flavor (Dover).

Answering the question of what was the richest community in New Jersey over the last half of the decade: Mendham Township, with a median household income of $183,085. Mountain Lakes was a close second, followed by Harding, with incomes of $181,938 and $176,917, respectively. In 2000, the last time local income figures were released, Rockleigh in Bergen County ranked first and Mountain Lakes was third, with an income of $141,757.

New Jerseyans are likely to see their property taxes rise by more than 2 percent next year despite a levy cap that takes effect Jan. 1, the leader of the state Senate said Tuesday.

Senate President Steve Sweeney told the New Jersey Business and Industry Association that businesses and homeowners can expect increases greater than 2 percent unless the economy improves dramatically. A stagnant economy means local governments collect less in taxes.

“If the economy turns around and you have growth in your tax base, you should be able to cover your costs,” Sweeney said. “The problem is, I don’t see growth in the economy.”

New Jerseyans already pay the highest property taxes in the country, averaging nearly $7,300 per year. Businesses pay about 40 percent of property tax collections, totaling $8.3 billion last year and contributing to the state’s notoriously unfriendly business climate.

The Legislature approved and Gov. Chris Christie signed a 2 percent cap on property tax growth this year. Pension and health care costs are exempt. Those costs have been rising at double-digit rates per year.

A tower of Frosted Flakes beckoned like blue toys at the entrance, with bounties of grapefruit and bananas just inside. But the picture of abundance at a local Super Fresh on Monday masked a heap of worry now that A&P, one of America’s oldest supermarket names, has tumbled into bankruptcy.

Thousands of jobs are on the line – as are the fates of dozens of area Pathmark, Super Fresh, and Food Basics stores – after the fabled corporation that owns the two chains, the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. Inc., filed Sunday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

“The way things are in this country, you just have to roll with the punches,” 30-year-old Aaron Courtney said as he stacked bell peppers at the Roxborough Super Fresh. “Whatcha gonna do?”

A&P, a onetime grocery powerhouse that has struggled for decades, finally buckled under the weight of debt – some of it resulting from its acquisition in 2007 of the Pathmark chain. A downturn in sales has endured even as the recession eases.

In its filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York, the company listed assets of $2.5 billion and liabilities of $3.2 billion as of Sept. 11. It blamed declining sales, a failure to renegotiate a key supply contract, and the high cost of its labor force as among the reasons for its bankruptcy filing.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller told distressed homeowners that he supports criminal prosecutions and other settlements against bank executives found guilty of breaking due process laws in dealing with foreclosure affidavits.

Miller met with homeowners Tuesday at a church in Des Moines, Iowa, to hear questions and go over possible settlements to the investigation into robo-signing allegations at mortgage servicing companies. Major banks froze foreclosures in October when employees signed affidavits en masse and without a review of documentation as required by state law. A joint investigation from federal regulators and a coalition of the 50-state AGs followed.

“We will put people in jail,” Miller told homeowners in the meeting, according to the PICO faith-based network, a consumer advocacy group.

A slump in government-backed mortgage bonds that has sent yields to the highest level since May is threatening a recovery in the U.S. housing market, which had been bolstered by record-low borrowing costs. Yields on Fannie Mae-guaranteed securities that most affect loan rates jumped to 4.22 percent during Tuesday trading in New York, an increase of more than 1 percentage point from a record low in October, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Higher loan rates “won’t be fun” for a fragile housing market, said Scott Simon, head of mortgage bonds at Newport Beach, Calif.-based Pacific Investment Management Co., manager of the world’s biggest bond fund. “If you were looking at buying a house a few weeks ago, the same house, to you, looks as much as 9 percent more expensive,” he said.

4- Thousands more unemployed and who will occupy those large buildings once the supermarkets leave? Personally, I found the Pathmark store where I live to be an uninviting place to shop. The produce didn’t even compare with the Shop-Rite or Stop and Shop’s. And the high school employees were actually more polite and helpful than the older employees, who just never seemed pleased to be there.

Grim “Higher loan rates “won’t be fun” for a fragile housing market”
Put a fork in it, 2011 will be another train wreak for a plethora of reasons.
I feel truly sorry for the people who are buying my old rental. They are committing financial suicide. Met wife there showing her mom the house on Sunday as I was picking up some odds & ends. Bit my tongue wished them well, they close 21st. Good friend is seller he is holding note giving a great rate (below 4), numbers still bad. There has to be somebody on the other side of the trade, right.

Question for fellow casino visitors, do the big Vegas casinos have the tracking devices implanted in the chips? I know that techonlogy was thought to be available. Wonder how this guy was able to get out the door and drive away?

Armed Motorcycle Bandit Nabs $1.5M in Vegas Heist
An armed robber didn’t need luck to leave the craps table with a big payout.
Las Vegas police released surveillance photos Tuesday of an armed casino bandit who escaped the Bellagio with $1.5 million worth of gambling chips.

“The suspect, wearing a full-face motorcycle helmet, entered the casino and went directly to a craps table. He pulled a gun, told everyone not to move and took approximately $1.5 million worth of casino chips,” according to a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department news release.

The robbery happened at 3:50 a.m. Tuesday and lasted only a few minutes. The man sped away on Flamingo Road on a black sport-style motorcycle.

Police Lt. Clint Nichols told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that security officers did not try to stop the gunman.
There were 15 patrons in the area during the robbery, detectives told the Las Vegas Sun.

RFID casino chips. The tracking only works at relatively short ranges under most conditions. They can only track the chips wiht in the casino/hotel where they have local scanners setup.

The problem for the robber is that those chips are now probably flagge dint he casino’s system so that if they come back in the building they will trigger some sort of alert to managament. If he tries taking the chips to another casino (assuming they are generic looking and not obviously labeled as that casino’s chips) that has a compatible RFID system then they could in theory have their system set to alert when the chips came in the door.

The RFID chip can be embedded within the plastic casino chip and undetectable by visual inspection of the chip. of course one easy way to kill the RFID chip within the casino chip is to place the chips in a microwave for a few seconds. It would fry the internal RFID chip and if done properly would not alter the exterior appearance of the casino chip. The robber then has a chance of being able to go back into the same casino and use the chips without being caught. However, the casino may have their system setup to check for non-functional chips which would give the robber away when a large number of non functional chips suddenly show up at the same time.
if you kill the RFID chip with microwaves the strategy would be to use only a few chips at any given visit to the casino and spread out the use of the stolen chips over a large period of time.
For anyone feeling particularly ambitious you could wreak havoc in the casino by covertly roaming about with a microwave transmitter frying the rfid chips (HERF). There is also published demonstrations on how to clone an rfid chip, meaning that the claims of this tech making it difficult to counterfeit chips are probably false for an ambitious and technologically savvy individual.

I would argue that when you consider a sophisticated opponent trying to “rob” the casino, RFID can be more of a liability then an asset. I could be wrong, but there are some very interesting demos of hacking encrypted rfid systems.
In theory if the robber is fairly sophisticated, and he could re-enter the casino as a regular gambler and surreptitiously record the rfid signal of currently good chips then clone his stolen chips to match those.

All idle speculation of course, and as a cat i have never been allowed inside a casino. Although i did get to fly in the cargo hold of a plane once ( it wasnt very pleasant).

It use to be a mark down when “Notice of default” was issue (@90 days) -then banks adjusted what a “default” was -so Wells Fargo went from 90 days to 180 days back in the summer of 2008. Washington Mutual did same and later went to 240 days – here is where problem happens because Balance Sheet says Mortgage is “OK” – but cash flow says “Not OK” and of course bankruptcy for WAMU.

Now under the present rules the loss is recognize when the bank wants till the point of sale of foreclose home – and frequently with the Wall Street Mob bankers it is this at this point that the loss is recognize and written down in the books.

So now you see the incentives to delay foreclosure and hold shadow inventory. And once you understand this you see that their ARE bankrupt and ARE for all intent and purpose a Japanese style Zombie bank.

Question was:

Can someone tell me at what point does a bank have to write down the value of a mtg on their books? I assume it is when the home is actually sold and the loss becomes real but want to verify.

Also, once the sale takes place, is that when the bank has to adjust its capital reserves?

The End of Extraordinarily Low Interest Rates Is Not Grounds for Panic
Wednesday, 15 December 2010 04:59
The interest rate on 10-year Treasury bonds plummeted in the summer, falling at one point to under 2.4 percent. It has recently risen back to a still very low rate just under 4.5 percent.

The Washington Post had a front page piece that highlighted this run-up in rates. The piece warned that higher rates will slow the economy and raise the government’s borrowing costs. It suggested that the higher rates could be attributable to the tax deal between President Obama and the Republicans in Congress which will close to $900 billion in debt over the next two years.

It is worth noting that the recent rise in interest rates puts them at almost exactly the level projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) last summer. CBO projected that the 10-year Treasury bill rate would average 3.4 percent for 2010 and 3.5 percent for 2011. The CBO projections suggest that the drop in interest rates was the development that needed to be explained, not the recent increase.

#10 – “And the high school employees were actually more polite and helpful than the older employees, who just never seemed pleased to be there.”

Young part timers feet hurt less and they might still have a future beyond stocking shelves.
And I suspect high school students who will work part time at a grocery (instead of a “cool” place) probably come from a home where they were taught a bit more of a work ethic.

How long until Gov gets the idea that everybody must have RFID planted under the skin? Everybody breathes, so it is interstate commerce according to Nancy, Harry and Barry, so Imperial Congress can regulate it. Unless Supreme Court agrees and kill Obamacare (which uses this shoreguyan logic) once and for all, this is not remote possibility anymore.

http://tinyurl.com/24qwlgm
Anyone got a piece of this baby. Up 400% in just over a week.
My buddy says its going to $1.00. It just means I’ll own more shiny.

Ps. Tutti is now 14 pounds thinner. Went out last night and she had a plain, grilled Salmon with nothing on it. No appetizzer, no dessert, no wine, you should have seen the bill. I handed the waiter a Benjamin and he gave me back change. I should have pulled this austerity plan years ago.

A former Harrison firefighter who retired on disability two years ago — and immediately went to work for a fire department in North Carolina — will no longer draw a check from the state of New Jersey.

Following inquiries by The Star-Ledger, the state Division of Pensions and Benefits cut off its payments to Herman Ellis, 39, who works as a full-time, able-bodied firefighter in Raleigh, N.C.

Ellis has received more than $60,000 in disability pension payments since his retirement in November 2008. The suspension of his $2,500 monthly benefit is effective Jan. 1, according to the pensions division.

The Star-Ledger profiled Ellis’ case Monday, the second day of a three-part series on the use of anabolic steroids and human growth hormone by New Jersey law enforcement officers and firefighters.

Ellis, a former Montclair resident, was one of 248 officers and firefighters to have received the substances through a Jersey City doctor, Joseph Colao, who often faked diagnoses to justify his prescriptions, the newspaper found. Colao died in August 2007.

Ellis has not responded to requests for comment.

The medical details of Ellis’ disability retirement are not public record. The monthly payments he received came from the New Jersey Police and Firemen’s Retirement System, which is funded through tax dollars, employee contributions and investments.

The retirement system’s board of trustees will take up Ellis’ case during a meeting Jan. 10, according to a spokesman for the state Treasury Department, which administers the fund.

The board could order Ellis to take a physical exam. If the firefighter is found able-bodied, the board could then cut off his benefits permanently and seek restitution.

Ellis makes $37,485 as a Raleigh firefighter. In an earlier interview, Raleigh Fire Chief John McGrath said he was troubled by the appearance of double-dipping.

On Tuesday, McGrath said that after consulting with the Raleigh city attorney, he had taken “appropriate measures” in dealing with Ellis. He declined to elaborate, calling it a personnel issue.

For the moment, Ellis remains on the job.

Separately, Ellis is facing a criminal charge that he assaulted his girlfriend in Raleigh earlier this year. The girlfriend was not injured during the incident. Ellis is scheduled to stand trial in that case in March.

re: # 47 – sure but I did not like Krammer trying to tie the Kiosk Company renting the name to the Bankrupt company playing shenanigans in court.

Blockbuster Committee Opposes Complete Document Dump

The creditors’ committee of Blockbuster Inc. has been asked by a creditor to turn over all communications between the committee and the movie-rental chain. The committee opposes the request made by creditor Lyme Regis Partners LLC. The bankruptcy judge will rule on the dispute at a Dec. 16 hearing.

The controversy relates to a perplexingly vague amendment that Congress made to bankruptcy law in 2005. Section 1102(b)(3) of the Bankruptcy Code provides that an official committee must provide an individual creditor with “access to information.”

Given that the statute contains no detail on what is and what’s isn’t required to be supplied, all significant Chapter 11 cases will have an agreement approved by the bankruptcy judge providing contours to what a committee must turn over to an individual creditor. In the Blockbuster case, the arrangement will be up for approval on Dec. 16.

The Blockbuster committee takes the position that the need to provide information must be “balanced in light of the fiduciary duty of the committee to general unsecured creditors and the attendant need to preserve confidential and proprietary information of a distressed company.”

The proposed Blockbuster arrangement would relieve the committee of the need to give a creditor confidential or non- public information. The committee could also decline a request when a response would be “unduly burdensome and/or unlikely to serve the best interest of the debtors’ estates.”

Lyme Regis has a motion of its own on the Dec. 16 calendar. At the hearing, the creditor wants the judge to give it permission to use subpoenas and conduct its own investigation about Carl Icahn and his dealings with the company.

The committee is performing an investigation of its own. The deadline for objecting to the validity of secured claims is being extended to Feb. 1, the committee said in a court filing.

Before the Chapter 11 filing in September, Blockbuster negotiated a plan with holders of 80 percent of the $630 million in 11.75 percent senior-secured notes. The plan would give them the new stock. General unsecured creditors would have warrants for 3 percent of the stock. Holders of the $300 million in 9 percent subordinated notes would receive nothing. After two extensions, the deadline for filing the plan is now Jan. 14.

Dallas-based Blockbuster has 5,600 stores, including 3,300 in the U.S., with the remainder abroad. Among the U.S. stores, 3,000 are owned and while the rest are franchised.

The petition listed assets of $1.017 billion against debt of $1.465 billion. Blockbuster estimated it owes $57 million in accounts payable in addition to the secured and subordinated notes.

The case is In re Blockbuster Inc., 10-14997, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

WABC/Channel 7 weather babe Heidi Jones has been suspended by the station pending an investigation after she was arrested for perpetrating the ultimate snow job — falsely claiming to cops that a man had tried to rape her while she was jogging in Central Park.

Jones, who anchors the station’s weekend evening weather coverage and fills in on “Good Morning America,” was charged on Monday with filing a false report, a Class A misdemeanor. If convicted, she could face up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine.

WABC said today that it has suspended Jones pending the outcome of an internal probe.

Heidi Jones
Jones, 37, told cops she was jogging in the park on the afternoon of Sept. 24 when a Hispanic man in his 30s or 40s grabbed her from behind, dragged her into a wooded area and attempted to rape her.

She told police that the would-be rapist was scared off by two passersby who came to her aid.

But for cops, the story was all wet.

The first clue was that she waited until Nov. 24, two months later, to report the alleged attack, the sources said.

At the time, the sources said, she told police that three days earlier, on Nov. 21, the same man somehow found her again and harassed her, saying, “I know you went to the police.”

After cops took her report, detectives conducted a lengthy investigation, canvassing the area for video and witnesses. Coming up empty-handed, they went to talk to Jones again — and noticed inconsistencies in her story, the sources said.

After being confronted with the discrepancies, Jones admitted that she had pulled the story out of thin air, the sources said.

Jones said she concocted the tale in a plea for sympathy to counter some unknown setback that she was experiencing in her personal life, the sources said.

I always thought she was strange, Heidi Jones used to dress like a man always in pants and many clothes, then when she got a bit more exposure they made her wear dresses and make-up, but somehow it still did not look right. Never liked her.

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller told distressed homeowners that he supports criminal prosecutions and other settlements against bank executives found guilty of breaking due process laws in dealing with foreclosure affidavits.

…and the NY AG should seek jail time against Iowa corn producers for bribing politicians into forcing every driver in America to pollute their fuel tanks with corn juice. What are we, the Balkan States of America?

out of curiosity…. for those refinancers i see that low rates was 4.17 hit the week of november 11 with .8 pts….based on http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/
on average. what is the lowest rate anyone has gotten here fixed for 30 yrs. with 0 pts.

Moose you would not be pleased to know what happened in Congress today. There was lots of testimony on MERS and Assignment “Fraud”. Jail Time isn’t so bad Moose 3 hots and a cot and all and plenty of time to get in shape and hit the weights.

The bank officers can be thrown in jail for failing to read each and every paper they sign the day after they throw a legislator in jail for failing to read the entirety of each and every bill (s)he votes in favor of.

Plus you get your very own West Orange Tax Bill to be proud of – 2010 tax due $21,583.
I’m not sure at what price I would start considering this house, given the current tax bill and taxing municipality.

70. Allsop Ct. was a failed experiment in corporate housing. Back when Allsop Record Cleaning products dominated the industry, Wendell Allsop developed this planned community for his corporate executives. Once the team was moved in a variety of parties and late night strategy session ensued. Yet it was the emergence of the CD that cost Allsop his vision. They never were able to dominate the digital sector of the industry as they had vinyl. Slowly the executives left and what you have today is an Allsop Court which is a shadow of it’s former self. An elite executive neighborhood with one fatal flaw.

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